Chiune Sugihara: Unsung Hero of the Holocaust

The Sidney & Nina Widell Memorial Series

Featuring actor Dwight Sora, the play looks at the life of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for Japan in Lithuania. During WWII he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from German-occupied Poland or residents of Lithuania. Sugihara wrote travel visas that facilitated the escape of more than 6,000 Jewish refugees to Japanese territory, risking his career and his family’s lives. In 1985 Israel named him to the Righteous Among the Nations for his actions, the only Japanese national to be so honored.

This program will be followed by the testimony of a Sugihara survivor, Chaya Small.